It occurred to me yesterday that the very reason why I was able to walk into the National Archives last summer and find my ancestors' names listed in a record of "contraband" was because they made the decision that I describe above. Think about it. That is the only reason. Had they stayed on the plantation, their names would not be listed in such a register. (Had someone acting in an official capacity visited the plantation and found them there and recorded their names, then their names would appear on that list. Same point, however.) Their decision resulted in their names being on a record that I am able to access one hundred and fifty-eight years later. Across all of those years, their actions connect with mine.
In this way, both their action and mine close up the temporal space between us, or merge time. Drawing closer to them in this way I am able better to envision them and to feel their decision. I get a better sense of who they were as I think about my grandmother and grandfather coming to the decision, how they informed their children that they would be leaving, what exactly they might have said to them. I see them in the slave cabin gathering what few things they had. I can even hear them talking to each other. Maybe they sat by a fire, and Grandfather Daniel shared with Grandmother Nancy that the guns were coming nearer. Maybe they both understood what that meant. Perhaps they had both heard of blacks in the next county fleeing to the Union lines. All of these imaginings, my imaginings, are connected to their decision. Because of it, I am able to breathe life back into what would otherwise be simply pen and ink.
It also occurs to me that these ancestors saw time differently than I have been accustomed to. While merging their time with my own seems for me a novel thing to do, I feel in my bones that they anticipated me. (They knew that there would be descendants, and whether ten years or a hundred passed, they knew that their lives would be reflected in the lives of those who would come after them.) I don't know if I've said it before, but the Williams ancestors left a wonderful paper trail, unbelievably long for an African American family. They also, obviously quite consciously, marked our family with certain key names. Although few of these ancestors were literate, they used naming practices to point out significant connections. These practices are a road map to the white families who owned us. In the record of contraband for instance, I've noted that few families reported as their own name something different from that of their last owner. My grandmother opted for a different name. So, from this record, I learn the name of her last owner, but I also have every reason to suspect that the surname that she took is that of a previous owner. Not only that. If she took her husband's surname, and it is all but certain that she did, then it was he who insisted on this name. This is yet another decision that should not be taken lightly. This is a very conscious choice, and it sends many messages about relationships and about treatment under slavery. I feel that my ancestors wanted me to know their perspective on slavery. It could not have been good, yet the choice to possess one owner's name over another's speaks, again, volumes.
Finally, Grandmother Nancy's and Grandfather Daniel's decision to leave the plantation was an exercise of faith, an act that points again to their view of time. I have come to believe that they saw, as many other slaves did, God's hand in their liberation. Thusly faithful, they believed that the universe would continue to create openings for them and others willing to step into them. As I continue to make sense of the paper trail, I realize that every time I see these ancestors'names on a document that these were examples of their stepping out on faith. At the end of the war, they had yet another decision before them. Possibly, they could have returned to Marshall County, gone to work for their former master. But no. Grandfather Daniel then decided to stay on in Memphis and to farm on land that had been the headquarters for the Department of Freedmen. This opportune situation resulted not simply from his being in the right place at the right time, but from his imagining that place and, then, moving toward it. In this way, Grandfather Daniel by himself (Grandmother Nancy having died before the end of the war) didn't just live in time; he manipulated it. To see openings that others perhaps do not see and to take advantage of those openings is to negotiate at least two temporal spheres. And, as writer Amy Tan has suggested, accepting this multi-dimensionality allows one to see even more openings.
So, this is what my ancestors' lives teach me. I too may traverse multiple times/spaces if I am faithful and unafraid. Time definitely is not fixed, and it is not linear. It is multi-dimensional; its many dimensions merge, and they can be accessed in various ways. This is what it means for a people to have a cosmology.
